The present invention relates to a feed device for labels, usable in a particularly advantageous manner on cigarette packaging machines for supplying to a packaging line labels comprising, for example, country stamps or sealing strips. Labels of the above described type are normally obtained either by cutting a continuous web or else by extracting from a stack of individual labels. Obviously, the machines utilising these labels are equipped with feed devices which are rather different depending on the labels obtained in one or the other of the two ways described above. The arrival on the market of utiliser machines having ever higher productivity has involved the necessity of being able to convert swiftly from one type of production to another for the purpose of fully exploiting the utiliser machine itself. A utiliser machine may in fact be used for a certain time for a production of articles intended for the home market, which require, for example, country stamps formed from a continuous strip, and for a certain other time for the production of articles intended for export, which are identified, for example, by country stamps or sealing strips provided in the form of individual labels. Obviously, the conversion from one type of production to the other on the same machine is economically justifiable only when it is possible to adapt the machine itself to a new type of production in a relatively short time.
Up to now there have only been known utiliser machines, in particular cigarette packaging machines, provided with feed devices operable to take labels from a continuous strip or else withdraw them from the bottom of a column-type magazine, and on which the conversion from one type of feed to the other is possible only by substituting all the associated feed devices.